File sharing ethical issues
Most people associate file sharing with ethical issues. But what does ethical issues mean?
Human Action
Ethics is a science. It deals with human action. One can think about this in many ways: How should human beings act, which values should guide them? What is good, what is bad action?
A good person, a bad person?
You have probably asked yourselves the question when a person is good or bad. This is not an easy question to answer. Because in doing And when you ask these questions, you assume that in many situations people have the option of acting one way or another. True, we often act in a certain way because we want to obey a law. But often we can also choose to do or not do something quite freely. For example, we can decide whether we want to help someone with a problem or whether we want to trick them, whether we want to share or prefer to be stingy. This same situation occurs in terms of file sharing ethical issues. Sharing certain files is illegal, so does that make it wrong?
How it all started
Sharing large music collections with friends and acquaintances has never been easier. However, not everything that is possible is legal. Because musicians want to make a living from their work. And that's why there's a copyright law that protects artists. So if you want to listen to their music, you have to pay for it. However, it is allowed to send a private copy to close friends. The emphasis is on "close." "So there has to be a personal bond between the parties involved," says Solmecke, a lawyer at the law firm Wilde, Beuger, Solmecke who specializes in IT law.
The carrier medium does not play a role. In other words, it doesn't matter whether someone downloads his music onto an external hard drive, a USB stick or a CD-ROM. But he may only make this carrier medium available to close friends so that they can copy the songs. "This also applies if the owner stores the music in a cloud service such as Dropbox," says Markus Scheufele, head of copyright at the German Association for Information Technology, Telecommunications and New Media, or Bitkom for short. However, the link to the stored tracks must not then be made public, nor must it be easy to guess. "Giving the link to the music collection to a good friend, on the other hand, is not a problem," says copyright expert Scheufele.
But anyone who gets the idea, for example, to share the link to the music collection in the cloud on Facebook with all their friends is breaking the law. "Because if someone has several hundred contacts on Facebook, you can't assume that they are equally good friends with all of them," says Solmecke. Accordingly, this is then no longer a private copy. Rather, one assumes that the number of private copies is more likely to be seven than several hundred, says the IT lawyer. "Even 12 or 20 are okay, as long as there is a personal bond between people. A school class, on the other hand, would not be okay, because certainly not everyone gets along equally well there."
The same applies to a hard drive swap party: there, many people meet to swap each other's hard drives in order to copy the music. And this is also against the law, because not everyone present will be close friends. The danger also lurks especially when using file sharing networks. So-called file sharing is strictly forbidden and is radically prosecuted and warned in Germany. With file sharing, you download music free of charge from the Internet from other users via special platforms, for example, and simultaneously offer it to third parties for download. This constitutes a copyright infringement, as the rights to the music titles are held by the respective rights holder. Only they are allowed to publish and distribute the music. File-sharing users therefore do not have these rights. In addition, there is no personal bond between those who exchange music.
File sharing is also prohibited: This involves downloading music from the Internet free of charge from other users via special platforms and offering one's own music in this way at the same time. Here, too, there is no personal bond between those who are exchanging.
File sharing ethical issues - Legal or not?
"In addition to the friendship criterion, there is another that determines whether a music exchange is legal or not," Scheufele knows. This concerns the original itself. If it is obviously illegal, it may not be copied. This means that anyone who has copied music, for example, through file sharing or on a hard drive sharing platform, may not make and pass on private copies. This also applies, for example, if there is copy protection on a CD that would have to be cracked. "If the copy is technically impossible, it is not allowed," says Scheufele. Also, anyone who records the music at a concert without the permission of the band as rights holder is acting against the law. "And if a hard drive is labeled 'Top 100 Charts hacked by ...' the violation is also obvious," Solmecke adds.
Music from streaming services
Source: pexels.com
With streaming services, users pay monthly to be able to listen to the music they want to hear. This makes an own CD or mp3 collection superfluous. However, streaming services often prohibit the music from being recorded. Wrongly, says Solmecke: "If a legal streaming service prohibits recording, it violates German law with its general terms and conditions." With providers such as Spotify, for example, the user pays to listen to the music. So he is also allowed to make a private copy of the songs. In addition, every computer has the option of recording music from streaming services via the sound card. Anyone who does this is not acting illegally.
Downloading Youtube songs
It is also very popular to download videos or only their audio tracks from platforms such as Youtube using special programs. Media lawyer Solmecke: "Naturally, this fairly new way of downloading music has sparked a lot of discussion. The copyright component in particular raises questions. However, since here only the audio track of a video is downloaded from the Youtube platform, one is basically only making a private copy." This is only problematic if the source is obviously illegal, he said. "In the case of Youtube, however, there is no sign of such obvious illegality, since it is generally known that record companies themselves also publish their artists' videos here for advertising purposes."
Solmecke continued, "In its terms of use, the platform does stipulate that videos may only be accessed as streaming and that they are not intended for downloads or copies. However, the consent for these terms of use is not required before watching videos. Accordingly, the terms of use cannot apply at all." According to the current legal situation, the conversion of Youtube audio tracks for private use is therefore not illegal.
Penalties for illegal music exchange
For artists and collecting societies, it is relatively easy to find out when music is being exchanged via file sharing. This is because each computer is given an IP address that can be assigned to a user. Although there are always warnings from lawyers that are successfully challenged, it is basically possible to punish the violation of the law. Even very large hard drive swap parties can be busted. However, it is much more difficult if, for example, a USB stick is passed on to several hundred people in private. However, anyone caught illegally swapping music can face sometimes hefty penalties: "A song usually costs 99 cents if you buy it," says Solmecke. Warning fees and damages for illegal copying and sharing are around 100 euros per song. But they can also be significantly higher."
Sell digital music collection
Those who are tired of their music and don't want to listen to it in the future still have a problem in the digital age. In the past, you simply sold the sound carrier, got rid of the music, and had money in hand for new CDs. Today, however, it is not so easy to determine whether a file is the original or the copy. "That's why, according to current higher court rulings in Germany, the resale of used digital music files can be effectively excluded in general terms and conditions, Scheufele says. So if the provider prohibits resale, this is effective and the sale of the digital music collection is illegal. "However, the last word has not yet been spoken. It is possible that the European Court of Justice will rule differently or that the legislature will issue a clarifying regulation in the near future," says Scheufele.
The truth about file sharing ethical issues
In Switzerland, for example, file sharing is completely legal. You can download movies and music, for example, to consume them yourself. However, as soon as you want to enrich yourself with it or share the file, it is an illegal activity. What is the situation in your country? If you don't know, then you should inform yourself before using file sharing services to share content that doesn't belong to you. We generally recommend that you only share files that you own or know that you have the right to share. Illegal file sharing can have severe consequences.